Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...
Happy Valentine’s Day from my little lovebug!
Don’t you love his L♥VE tee? I found it in St. Louis 2 weeks ago and thought it was perfect for Valentine’s.
Maxwell is going to have a great day full of Valentine cookies at school (this recipe – the BEST!) and sweet Valentine cards for all of his friends.
I just made the cards out of cardstock and let Maxwell color away on each of them. Cute and super easy!
I hope you all have a day full of L♥VE…
♥ Happy Valentine’s Day! ♥
Happy Monday all! Hope you had a good weekend. Ours was full of family and fun. We headed down to Montgomery to see Robert’s family and go to the Maskers Ball. Now….let me try and explain this ball to those of you that have no idea things like this exist (which was me too before marrying Robert). In short, it’s a debutante ball…but just calling it a deb ball doesn’t even remotely do it justice. The origins of the ball (and the several others like it that go in Montgomery, Mobile and New Orleans) are rooted in Mardi Gras. The balls are put on by krewes and all krewe members dress up in these very elaborate costumes and masks during the ball (like a masquerade party during Mardi Gras). There are several maids (debutantes) and one queen. There is also a king (a senior member of the krewe) who escorts the queen. This year, the king was no other than Robert’s dad! His costume was so elaborate that I didn’t even hardly recognize him…a wig, a fake beard, makeup. They go all out, I tell ya!! Robert’s sister is a former queen, our niece Katie was a princess last year and our other niece, Anna, will be a princess next year. It’s a family affair!
The whole thing is just a big, fun party and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly! I personally just love any excuse to get all dressed up! 🙂
Maskers is always the weekend before Valentine’s Day with a “sweetheart” theme. Lots of pics from the ball below. Check out the king’s garb!!
Told you they go all out! I guess I didn’t get a picture of them, but all the Maskers members have masquerade masks that they wear with their costumes. Most of them take them off after the deb presentation though…they’re a little hard to drink in! 🙂
Meanwhile, back at Lulu and Granddad’s house, Maxwell was having a ball playing with Katie and Anna….or maybe that was the other way around! Katie and Anna sure had fun treating Maxwell like their little doll! My pretty little boy got hair bow’ed…
be-jeweled…
and even magic wand-ed!!
Oh, the joys of girl cousins! These 3 were running around like the musketeers all weekend. They sure do have fun together!
One funny story to end on… While we were all at the ball, we had a sweet sitter named Connie watching all 3 of the kids. Maxwell has a history of not sleeping while we’re in Montgomery so we warned Connie that he might cry a LOT before going to bed and that if she just wanted to keep him up until we got home, that would be just fine! We didn’t want to torture the poor woman! Well, when we got home around midnight, Connie said that Maxwell had only cried for about 2 to 3 minutes before going to sleep. We were so excited! He slept all night and we could not have been happier or more relieved. However, the next morning when Katie and Anna got up they both said, “Is Maxwell ok? because he was crying a LOT last night!” HA! We may never know the truth but I appreciate sweet Connie for perhaps bending the truth just a bit! 🙂
Alright, that’s it for today. Let’s all go make it a great week!
It seems like it’s time to do another update of what all Maxwell is doing these days so I’ll always remember!
He’s 17 months old and is a busy little boy! He’s running everywhere and getting better and better with steps every day. He can go up them pretty easily but still has a tendency to turn around and go down them on his hands and knees. Better safe than sorry I say! Although, yesterday he did walk down 3 flights of stairs while holding my hand! Big boy! He also walked all the way to the library and back with Susan. Whoa! While he’s an expert walker, he definitely still prefers to be pushed around in his little red car!
Maxwell’s vocabulary is expanding daily. Some words he gets right and some words he makes up his own version! 2 funny ones are daddo for remote and ga-ga for glasses. He toot-toots when he sees a train and makes a siren noise when he sees a fire truck. He also says dada, mama, truck, oh (instead of uh-oh), shoe, sock, ball, ay-ay (baby) and all sorts of animal sounds. He’s getting really good at knowing which animal is which. He can get his Little People pig and then go find the pig on the SeeNSay and his animal puzzle. He can snort like a pig, moo like a cow, roar like a lion and neigh like a horse. I know his vocabulary is just going to explode soon because he definitely knows what we’re saying a lot of the time. He shakes his head yes or no when you ask him a question and will often do exactly what we tell him (I’m sure that won’t last!). If you ask him if he’s ready to take a bath, he’ll just get up and march into the bathroom! Same goes for dinner and bedtime (well, he marches to his chair or bedroom for those, not the bathroom)! 🙂 He also clearly knows when he’s doing something he’s not supposed to because he’ll check to see if I’m watching and then shoot me this sly little grin. Yes, I’m in trouble!!
A funny face but check out those dimples!
He’s still a great sleeper – from 7pm to 7am. He naps at 1:00 for about 3 hours.
Some more of his favorites these days:
Food continues to be an adventure. While he’s a great eater overall, there are certain things he won’t touch – like fresh fruit. Yea, I don’t get it either and believe me, I’ve tried everything. But, he loves oatmeal, veggie sausage, waffles, yogurt (lots of yogurt!), applesauce, almond butter, spinach pancakes, veggie corndogs, fishies, beans and other things I can’t remember right now. I recently added a little bit of apple juice to his sippy cup and he’s LOVING that – drinking about double the amount of water he was when it was just plain water. He still takes 2 bottles of milk a day (don’t judge) and I don’t know how we’re ever going to be able to give those up. He loves them THAT much.
A few other random things to remember:
I know I’ve said this a million times before, but it just keeps getting better. I sure do love my little buddy!
See you tomorrow!
I haven’t mentioned this on the blog yet because I think I didn’t want to jinx it but…we are a paci-free household! Hooray! About 3 weeks ago when Maxwell was cutting his molars, I noticed that he wasn’t sucking on his pacifiers at all – just chewing on them. I knew we needed to get rid of them eventually so I thought I’d just take them off the Pacimals and see what happened. Well, I’ll tell you what happened…nothing! Maxwell just continued on like he never had them! I’ve still got a few pacifiers laying around in drawers but he hasn’t had one in several weeks! I don’t know if I was really thinking it would be hard to get rid of them but I never thought it would be this easy!
I will say – this is one more reason I think the Pacimals (here and here) are fantastic. We took off the paci but he still has his lovey. Perfect!
So, here’s to seeing no more paci-face…
and lots more silly faces like these!
ps – please check out the picture below. Maxwell was only 2 weeks old with the same paci as the picture above.
Oh my sweet baby. That paci was as big as his head!!
Today I present scenes from a little red car…
His cheeks look even more squeezable with his hood up. If only he would stay a chubby cheeked baby forever.